62d Congress, 1st Session.

Senate Doc. (Executive Series E.)

Special Message from the President of the United States, suggesting certain amendments to the convention between the United States and Nicaragua (Executive B, 62d Cong., 1st sess.), concerning a loan which Nicaragua contemplates making with citizens of the United States.

[Read July 17, 1911; referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations, and ordered to be printed in confidence for the use of the Senate. Made public August 5, 1911.]

To the Senate:

In my special message of June 28, 1911 (Confidential Executive C, 62d Cong., 1st sess.), I brought to the knowledge of the Senate the fact that the loan convention between the United States and Nicaragua, signed on June 6, 1911, and transmitted to the Senate on the following day, had been approved by the Nicaraguan Congress with certain slight unobjectionable changes.

I am now enabled to inform the Senate that the action of the Nicaraguan Congress in this respect consisted in so changing Article IV of the Spanish text of the convention as to make it follow mutatis mutandis the language of the Spanish text of the same numbered article of the loan convention between the United States and Honduras.1 I transmit herewith a correct copy of the article as adopted by the Nicaraguan Congress, which has been furnished by the American Minister at Managua.

The Senate will not fail to notice that the change made is of phraseology only; that it in nowise affects the sense or force of the article; and that it requires the amendment by the Senate of the English text of the article only in two unimportant and immaterial particulars, namely, the striking out, in lines 7 and 8 of the article, of the words “who need not be a Nicaraguan and,” and in line 13 the words “should the circumstances require.”

I therefore recommend that in giving its advice and consent to the ratification of this convention, the Senate will do so with the following amendments: “In lines 7 and 8 of Article IV, strike out the words ‘who need not be a Nicaraguan and’; and in line 13 of the [Page 1078] same article the words ‘should the circumstances require.’” As so amended the article would read as follows:

Article IV.

The Government of Nicaragua, so long as the loan exists, will appoint from a list of names to be presented to it by the fiscal agent of the loan and approved by the President of the United States of America, a collector general of customs, who shall administer the customs in accordance with the contract securing said loan and will give this official full protection in the exercise of his functions. The Government of the United States will in turn afford such protection as it may find requisite.

I have already on three occasions1 endeavored to impress upon the Senate the great importance which I attach to the consummation of this convention and the like convention with Honduras, and have stated the reasons which persuade me to take this view. Reiteration of these reasons is unnecessary and might tax the patience of the Senate; but my conviction of the benefits which would accrue from these conventions is so strong that the Senate will acquit me of over-zeal if, feeling my responsibility to the interests of the United States, I should deem it my duty, as I do, again most earnestly to commend them to the favorable consideration of the Senate during its present session.

Wm. H. Taft.

  1. See page 561.
  2. One of these being in the message of January 26, 1911, printed under Honduras, Financial Affairs, p. 555.